Paul Taylor Dance Company: transcendental

If you live in the NYC area and are at all interested in dance, there’s good news: the Paul Taylor Dance Company is performing at the City Center right now. They’ll only be there through the 18th, so you’ll need to hurry.

I was fortunate to see them perform the other night. In a word: transcendental. Particular kudos go to the intensely brilliant dancing of Annmaria Mazzini, whom you see leaping so ferociously in the graphic above.

The Paul Taylor Dance Company does tour around the country — you can view their schedule on their site. I really urge you to pay them a visit. I was just bedazzled.

 

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publishing 101: the truth

Jane Yolen’s online journal, Telling the True, is also a favorite of mine (see Endicott Journal below). Jane Yolen is the illustrious author who has frequently been called a latter day Hans Christian Anderson. In her journal’s latest entry, she mentions the unfortunate reality that it’s become harder for midlist authors to have their books reviewed. And without reviews, books often are unable to be acquired by libraries — an important market for those who write children’s literature. It also makes it harder to have books picked up by retail markets.

So what is an author to do? Jane mentions blogs as one way authors are “taking the reins of the marketing pony” (her phrase, not mine), with a caveat: Sometimes telling the truth can have unexpected results for an author.

To see one example of what she means, check out this link here.

I suspect the post which prompted the writer’s cri du coeur has been taken down. And not surprisingly, considering that some anonymous poster has accused her of committing career suicide by mentioning that one of her books has gone OP (out of print in the biz).

Here’s the truth: Books go OP. To mention this isn’t suicide, it’s reality. A book going OP is not because of the author or illustrator most of the time. It’s the reality of publishing, which imho has been in flux the past few years.

More truth telling: Books have 90 days to make their mark on the shelves of Barnes and Noble (sometimes less) before next season’s list comes in to stake their claim. You know those books that are displayed face out on the end of aisles, the special displays? Usually publishers pay for those spots — they’re rented, like any slab of real estate. Publicists and marketing departments at publishing houses are often laden with more books that they can effectively promote. And without publicity, book sales shrivel up like a plant without water.

But there’s also good news. One recent survey I read mentioned that the chains (Barnes and Noble, Borders and the like) are only responsible for 55% of book sales, which is astonishing. This means that 45% of books are being sold via untraditional means, which are becoming more traditional these days, including online sales.

What does this mean for the average author? To survive in publishing, authors have to work hard to extend their markets for their books — which ties back a bit to what Jane wrote earlier regarding blogging.

I know that I’m still figuring out this brave new world, as are many other authors

ETA: Actually, it’s only 45% of book sales which are via chain bookstores. 55% of sales are through other sources. I doublechecked and found that I’d inverted the statistics. Even more astonishing, no?

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Have a question about publishing, writing or illustrating books you’d like answered on Publishing 101? Send it to Kris: e-comment at artandwords dot com.

Technorati Tags: publishing, selling books, out of print books, Jane Yolen, Barnes and Noble

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Museum of Love article

More press is coming in, much of it related to the Lover’s Path. I’ve yet to power up my scanner for the NMoWA review. But in the meantime, here’s an interesting article about my Museum of Love website. It was recently published in Brooklyn’s Courier-Life newspaper’s art section, 24/7.

Don’t log off without checking into the Museum of Love
By Michèle De Meglio

	Visit www.museumoflove.org and learn all about the ins and outs of amore

Need a little help in the romance department?

Then check out a new Web site designed to bring undying love to the masses.

At www.museumoflove.org, visitors can enter the enchanting world of the fictitious Museo di Palazzo Filomela and learn all about the ins and outs of amore.

“I wanted the Museum of Love to be the most romantic site on the Web,” explained its creator, Brooklyn-based author and illustrator Kris Waldherr.

It was her latest bestselling book that inspired her to create the Web site.

“My illustrated novel ‘The Lover’s Path’ features a museum in it, the Museo di Palazzo Filomela or the museum of the palace of the nightingale,” she explained. “As I worked on ‘The Lover’s Path,’ the museum took on a life of its own. I began to imagine an entire backstory for it, which originates in a 16th century Venetian love affair. This expanded to beyond what I could feature in my book. Eventually I thought it would be fun to create a Web site for the museum, featuring my paintings and writing and my publications.”

Posted on the Web site is an illustrated tour of the museum’s interior, which Waldherr created from her home in Brooklyn’s Kensington neighborhood. Doing so was just another way for the talented illustrator to express her creative side.

“I thought it would be fun,” she said of why she opened the site. “And it was – you have no idea how much fun it was to create the artifacts, to think up the museum backstory…I like the idea of a Web site being an alternative medium for creating a story.”

The content on the site is also largely based on famous couples throughout history.

“There’s paintings of famous lovers, retellings of love stories, animated artifacts that present the Museum of Love’s imaginary history and biographies of its original inhabitants,” Waldherr said.

Once on the site, hopeless romantics can send love letters to the special people in their lives. The electronic messages are adorned with images of well-known couples, such as Tristan and Isolde, Cupid and Psyche, and Isis and Osiris.

“The myth of Cupid and Psyche speaks about how love changes and challenges us,” Waldherr said. “The story of Dante and Beatrice is comforting to anyone who has suffered unrequited love. It basically tells us to let love inspire us to great deeds, instead of sitting in a room sad and rejected.”

There’s a special page on the site for people who have had their hearts broken.

As Waldherr explained, “It was something a friend suggested. She felt that I needed to address people who maybe aren’t so happy in love to make my work and the Museum accessible to them on this level. After all, art is often a search for catharsis.”

The site even includes typical museum features.

“Like all museums, there’s also a gift shop which features my publications,” Waldherr said.

Moving from the literary world to the World Wide Web was not a stretch for Waldherr, a true romantic who met the love of her life while traveling on a Brooklyn subway.

Waldherr hopes Web crawlers will tour www.museumoflove.org and be inspired to rekindle the flame in their own love lives, especially since Brooklyn is a wildly romantic borough.

“Like my Museum of Love, which is set in an imaginary Venice, Brooklyn is also set on water. And water lends itself beautifully to romantic activities – twilight walks across the Brooklyn Bridge, visits to the [Brooklyn Heights] Promenade, caviar and blinis overlooking the ocean on the Brighton Beach boardwalk, boat rides in Prospect Park, or a stroll around the koi pond in the Japanese garden of the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.”

“Ultimately, I hope the Museum of Love is a beautiful place to visit – I love the idea of a museum that only exists in the imagination,” she said. “But more importantly, I hope the site will help to inspire people to think about love in a deeper, more mythic way.”

©Courier-Life Publications 2007

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changes on the way . . .

As you can see, I’ve updated the theme for this blog yet again — the second time in about two months. It’s not that I have so much time on my hands. (I clearly don’t, alas.) But I’m preparing for the upcoming publication of the Goddess Inspiration Oracle, and some things need to be taken care of sooner rather than later.

Part of this preparation will include a new front page for Art and Words, and a new mailing list interface. It’s been some time since these have been updated! It’s all part of my grand plan to make this site a more integrated and accessible experience.

ETA: I also updated the blog so people can actually comment. Heh. I did not realize that someone had to log into Wordpress itself before commenting until a friend e-mailed me directly. Too many options, too little time.

Oh, I also have a new review and an article about The Lover’s Path. I hope to post these soon! The review is from the magazine for the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and it’s a lovely one.

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goddess drawing of the day: Eostre

And on a related daffodil-inspired note, here’s a drawing I recently completed of Eostre, the Celtic goddess of spring. I’m sure you can easily tell that her name inspired the Christian holiday of Easter.

This drawing was created for a book I’m illustrating for Llewellyn, which will be published sometime this year.

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